It's hard to pinpoint an exact moment when my relationship with my country soured.
Like any relationship gone wrong, the unhappy moments started to outweigh the happy ones. In the beginning, I didn't notice the imbalance. Then I did. Suddenly, in January this year, it seemed as though all my thoughts revolved around "why I'm not happy here anymore". I'd wake up feeling anxious, and fall asleep wondering if we'd hear our kitchen window being smashed by a burglar in the night.
"What you focus on, increases." And all I seemed to focus on were all my reasons for feeling unsafe in SA.
And yet, I felt just like a woman leaving the battle-scarred remains of an abusive relationship, hesitant, terrified of the unknown, saturated in doubts and misgivings. Should I stay, or should I go? Year in, year out.
It seems the last few years I've been waiting for some final straw, some bad experience to justify why we finally are leaving. I haven't noticed how I've moved the bench-posts all along, come up with excuses, made concerted efforts to "make the best of it", wavered and procrastinated.
"Life is just too damn short to keep my kids caged up any longer," I tell K. "It's too short not to enjoy hiking up a mountain without worrying that we'll be mugged."
I want my children to run free, cycle to school, play in the streets, come home in the dark. If there is still a country out there where I'd have to call my kids home at sunset, I want to live in it.
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